Stanford expands free, online information technology course offerings

Summary:New online courses set to start in January 2012 include Software as a Service and Computer Science 101, as well as primers on entrepreneurship. Be sure to check out Stanford's iTunes U as well.

Three million people have checked out the AI course page since it was announced (now doubt driven by my blog post here), and course co-professor Peter Norvig reports that 35,000 students have stuck with the course and exams. There are also 135 students taking the course onsite, Norvig is quoted as saying in the Good News site,

"This course teaches the engineering fundamentals for long-lived software using the highly-productive Agile development method for Software as a Service (SaaS) using Ruby on Rails. Agile developers continuously refine and refactor a working but incomplete prototype until the customer is happy with result, with the customer offering continuous feedback. Agile emphasizes user stories to validate customer requirements; test-driven development to reduce mistakes; biweekly iterations of new software releases; and velocity to measure progress. We will introduce all these elements of the Agile development cycle, and go through one iteration by adding features to a simple app and deploying it on the cloud using tools like Github, Cucumber, RSpec, RCov, Pivotal Tracker, and Heroku."

Being in the heart and brains of Silicon Valley, Stanford professors will also be offering two online courses on entrepreneurship. The entrepreneurship courses include Technology Entrepreneurship—a class on how to launch a successful startup, and The Lean Launchpad, which will teach how to turn "a great idea into a great company."

In a separate but related development, Stanford also says it has just released the iOS 5 incarnation of iPhone Application Development on iTunes U, where the public can download course lectures and slides for free. Some of the most talked-about features of Apple's latest operating system include iCloud, streamlined notifications and wireless syncing. When Stanford's first iPhone apps course appeared online in 2009, it made iTunes history by rocketing to a million downloads in just seven weeks.

Joe McKendrick is an author and independent analyst who tracks the impact of information technology on management and markets. Joe is co-author, along with 16 leading industry leaders and thinkers, of the SOA Manifesto, which outlines the values and guiding principles of service orientation. He speaks frequently on cloud, SOA, data, and...
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Joe McKendrick is an independent consultant, editor and speaker. Joe has performed project work (white papers, articles, blogs, research and presentations) for the following companies in the IT marketspace: CBS Interactive/CNET/ZDNet (this blog) ebizQ Evans Data Gartner IBM Informatica IDC Microsoft Systinet/HP Teradata Unisphere Reseach, a division of Information Today, Inc. WebLayers Joe has also performed research work for the following sponsoring organizations in partnership with Unisphere Research, a division of Information Today, Inc. IBM Luminex Noetix Oracle Corp. Teradata Informatica International Oracle Users Group Oracle Applications Users Group Professional Association for SQL Server International DB2 Users Group International Sybase Users Group SHARE (IBM large systems users group)